Hacker News: 3minus1

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: What makes someone hate their job?"

3minus1 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:54:44 +0000

A really bad colleague can make a job miserable. I slightly bad manager can also make it suck.

New comment by 3minus1 in "The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything"

3minus1 — Tue, 06 May 2025 20:40:34 +0000

Most people automate things just barely enough to work. The thing is, having a barely working script or process can save someone thousands of hours. It's actually hugely valuable. Trying to make it more robust/productionized/whatever may have diminishing returns.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: What made your favorite manager so great?"

3minus1 — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:45:31 +0000

Some of my favorite qualities in various managers:

  - Deep technical knowledge. Someone you can respect as a fellow engineer.
  - Really loud and forceful in meetings. Someone who can represent your work well to a team of other managers
  - A good friend
  - Super honest and transparent
  - Combination of deep technical knowledge and passion/involvement in the team's mission. This was my favorite because I felt the manager could truly appreciate the work I did.

New comment by 3minus1 in "But what if I want a faster horse?"

3minus1 — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:29:01 +0000

I really don't think bad Product Manager's is a good explanation for the UI. Any big company like Netflix is going to heavily A/B test any and every change to the UI. They will only ever add things that boost metrics like engagement. You may not like the UI; it may annoy you, but you should have some appreciation for the fact that they are using sophisticated techniques to optimize for what they care about.

New comment by 3minus1 in "A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)"

3minus1 — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 13:31:40 +0000

There's this video called 1 to 30 song

New comment by 3minus1 in "A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)"

3minus1 — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 15:59:35 +0000

As a morning parent of a toddler, part of the morning routine is playing a toddler exercise video. It's funny, my initial thinking was to burn some of the toddler's energy before sitting down to breakfast, but at this point it's definitely more for me. Sometimes the toddler even complains but I've come to really enjoy doing some stretches in the morning.

New comment by 3minus1 in "TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday"

3minus1 — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:36:59 +0000

> There's a reason people pay for Netflix despite pirating proposing a higher level of quality; Netflix is just easier

I'm slightly annoyed how this comment completely ignores the moral and ethical reasons someone might want to avoid making an illegal copy of something while denying it's creators any compensation. I need more coffee.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: Recruiters, how many hours after a job posting is too late to apply?"

3minus1 — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 18:37:26 +0000

> If you are serious about finding a job, you HAVE to rely on your network

This is not a hard rule. My last 4 jobs I got without a network connection, and I work at a large, well-known company now.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week"

3minus1 — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:01:30 +0000

This reminds me of when cities in the Bay Area started considering restrictions on free meals at work, because local restaurants were annoyed it reduced their lunch crowd. I'm sure that same group has a vested interest in people commuting to jobs.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: Which movies did you watch multiple times?"

3minus1 — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 21:25:05 +0000

LOTR The Matrix Gladiator No Country for Old Men QT: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs PT Anderson: Boogie nights, Magnolia, There will be Blood Fight Club Nolan: Memento, Batman Galaxy Quest Dumb and dumber Jurassic Park Terminator 2 Princess Bride Star Wars OT Indiana Jones 1 & 3 Office Space

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: Returning to tech after 4 years?"

3minus1 — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:11:07 +0000

Your degree and work experience are huge assets, and it would be wise to leverage them. It's too bad that you got burned on your first job, but there are huge differences across jobs. If you don't like learning new tech you can find many jobs where it's not required (government and bigger companies). Even if you decide you don't want to do coding, you can leverage your education, experience, and tenure at a company into adjacent roles (product manager, manager, business intelligence, DBA, QA, etc.).

New comment by 3minus1 in "The fishy death of Red Lobster"

3minus1 — Thu, 02 May 2024 21:42:47 +0000

> The thing about a restaurant is that you'll always have business if the food and service are good.

This is just demonstrably false. Good food and service is no guarantee of product-market fit.

New comment by 3minus1 in "This is a teenager"

3minus1 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 22:48:48 +0000

As others have mentioned this site heavily implies causality with statements like "we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect" and "college or technical school can mitigate some of the effects of adverse childhood experiences". It is simply not possible to draw such conclusions from a longitudinal study. Interventions and actual experiments are necessary.

The site is really nicely done and even moving, but I find the ideas it is putting forth harmful honestly. We all would like to see better outcomes for teenagers, but if that is truly our goal we should not be shaping public policy around non-scientific observations on correlations. Let's do some actual science please and build policy around that.

New comment by 3minus1 in "This is a teenager"

3minus1 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 21:28:45 +0000

It doesn't seem unlikely to me at all. Lots of people are smart or successful despite coming from a broken home. Weird example but Eminem was extremely poor growing up.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Embezzlers Are Nice People (2017)"

3minus1 — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:52:04 +0000

> every business is a scam of sorts that relies upon the weaknesses of human nature to thrive

Yes, the next time you go to buy a computer or mobile phone you should just skip it because it's a scam. Just manufacture and assemble the hardware yourself and create the operating system/ecosystem of apps while you're at it. It just pure laziness not too. Or maybe consider that capitalism and the division of labor benefits you massively.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught"

3minus1 — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:16:00 +0000

It's true the system may have glitched in the past, but IMO the bigger issue is that the system provides no troubleshooting steps. What if it snapped a photo of every passenger as it scanned their ticket. Then on a duplicate scan it could display the photo of the passenger who already scanned the ticket. That could help the gate agent to actually troubleshoot the warning and figure out what happened.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years"

3minus1 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 19:50:27 +0000

As bad as it is that he was unjustly sent to a mental hospital, I wonder if getting on medication helped him get into a better place and advocate for himself more credibly.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years"

3minus1 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 19:38:55 +0000

In the article it says they proved his innocence by reaching out to his dad and doing a DNA test.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: Any advice on navigating this job market or pivoting out of tech? (US)"

3minus1 — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 22:30:35 +0000

With a CS degree you are well-positioned to get a job making good money after graduating. CS is still a good career, where you can work sane hours, with low stress, and get paid to think and solve and problems.

The current economic climate means it may mean a longer job search or worse job options, but getting any job with regular coding will be huge deal as the work experience will open many doors further down the line.

You already invested 4 years in training. You are qualified for a great many jobs. Unless you truly dislike the work itself, my advice is to stay the course.

New comment by 3minus1 in "Ask HN: Tenured folks got fired, how can one setup career to be safe?"

3minus1 — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 04:12:51 +0000

A few pieces of advice:

* It's better to work 10 different jobs over the years, than do a single job for 10 years.

* Know how much you are worth and job hop when you are underpaid.

* Be aware of how the work you do creates value for the business. Chasing the latest tech fads is not adding value. Working on edge-case features that no one cares about is not adding value. Saving the company $$$ by making things more efficient absolutely adds value and job security.

* Always add value. If a role does not "feel right", like it's too easy and you know you are not contributing much then run.

* Seek mentors.

* Accept that change is the only constant and you could lose your job, but if you managed your career well finding a new job should not be bad.

* Manage your finances so you can weather a bad industry downturn.